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November 2016

A Note to the boo-hoo crowd -Dry your tears, blow your noses, and grow up!! By Ruth King

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/11/a_note_to_the_boohoo_crowd.html

A friend whom I love told me yesterday that his teenaged daughter cried herself to sleep when Trump won and that in school (a private and tony school… natch) “counselors” comforted the students in their grief. This was repeated throughout the city in public as well as private schools and in colleges.

He was quite outraged at my scorn, having expected more empathy. When I asked how she felt about the senatorial and congressional election — after all, Congress can halt those dreadful actions that a Trump “dictatorship” would enact… it was clear that neither father nor daughter knew who ran and on what issues.

After that jarring conversation I reflected on those things that affected me at her age, although I generally don’t engage in smarmy nostalgia.

When I was a teenager the words “iron lung” terrified us as we saw schoolmates maimed and felled by a raging polio epidemic. We had to absorb a genocide that killed one of every three Jews in the world, including my grandparents and all my cousins, uncles, and aunts. We were affronted by racial laws that discriminated against Negroes in the South and denied hiring and educational opportunities throughout the rest of the country; signs that said “no dogs and no Jews”; poverty and joblessness that afflicted and rendered whole families homeless as their possessions were placed on the sidewalks following their evictions; and the banning of books, films, and music.

But we did have the freedom to engage in debate and to differ with one another and agree on protesting the foregoing policies that were inimical to a proper democracy. And we did pass around clandestine copies of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Tropic of Cancer — both banned for their explicit sex.

At the Bronx High School of Science, we argued over Eisenhower versus Stevenson, over the use of nuclear weapons to end the war in Japan, over the death penalty for the Rosenbergs, over the Korean War and the firing of General MacArthur, over the threat of Communism, over local and national policies and politics and foreign policy.

Our debates were loud but civilized. When Adlai Stevenson lost the election to General Dwight Eisenhower many students were in shock that the “intellectual” lost to a military man. The faculty, which was very liberal, offered no safe spaces and no counseling. We did not need them.

What has happened to these coddled and spoiled and illiberal young people today?

A European Migrant Reckoning Mainstream European leaders are beginning to think about real solutions to the crisis.

Europe’s migration crisis may have reached a turning point. With populist and far-right parties on the march across the Continent, mainstream European leaders are starting to listen to voters’ concerns about absorbing more than a million newcomers from the Middle East and Africa. It’s about time.

One sign came Sunday, when the German Interior Ministry called for aggressive interception of refugees attempting to cross the Mediterranean from North Africa. “The elimination of the prospect of reaching the European coast could convince migrants to avoid embarking on the life-threatening and costly journey,” an Interior Ministry official told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

The Mediterranean crossing from Libya to Italy is one of two major routes used by migrants to reach Europe, and it is by far the more perilous. With revenues down, smugglers are stuffing more would-be migrants aboard unseaworthy boats for a crossing on choppy waters that can take several hours. One in every 44 doesn’t make it.

Even so, some 164,000 crossed through the Libya-Italy route this year. The German proposal could dramatically reduce that number by rerouting intercepted migrants back to African countries such as Egypt and Tunisia. Currently, intercepted boats are towed to the Italian coast. Once rerouted, the migrants would be allowed to apply for asylum through legal channels.

This model, which we have long championed, has the benefit of imposing order on a chaotic situation. It also reduces the incentives for the smuggler business model, since the traffickers’ clients—the migrants—will understand that they are wasting their money and risking their lives in vain.

Which brings us to the second migrant route, from Turkey to the Balkans via the Greek islands. About 170,000 have arrived via the so-called Western Balkan Corridor so far this year, and here, too, there are signs that European officials are getting serious. To wit, Austrian Defense Minister Hans Peter Doskozil over the weekend warned that a Brussels deal with Ankara to intercept migrants may not last, and that European governments must be prepared to police EU borders on their own.

Trump Adviser: Israeli Settlement Building Not an Impediment to Peace Jason Greenblatt told Israeli radio the president-elect doesn’t see the settlement activity as problematic By Felicia Schwartz

A top policy adviser to Donald Trump during his campaign said the president-elect doesn’t view Israeli settlements built in disputed areas as an obstacle to peace, a position sharply at odds with Obama administration policy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Obama administration opposes Israel’s settlement building, and has ramped up criticism from previous administrations—both Republican and Democratic—of the activity.

Jason Greenblatt, who Mr. Trump named co-chair of an Israel policy committee during his campaign in July, on Thursday played down any risk from the building activity to peace prospects.

“Mr. Trump does not view the settlements as being an obstacle for peace,” Mr. Greenblatt told Israel’s Army Radio. “The two sides are going to have to decide how to deal with that region, but it’s certainly not Mr. Trump’s view that settlement activity should be condemned and that it is an obstacle to peace. It is not the obstacle to peace.”

Mr. Greenblatt is an executive vice president and chief legal officer of the Trump Organization. He said he would be honored to serve in a Trump administration and work on issues including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but that it was too early to say whether he would.

President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and other U.S. officials have said Israel’s construction of settlements is hindering the possibilities to reach a peace deal providing for side-by-side Jewish and Palestinian states, a U.S. goal since the 1980s.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Thursday that Mr. Greenblatt’s comments contradict years of bipartisan U.S. policy.

“Trying to change facts on the ground only puts a negotiated settlement, a resolution of differences between the two parties, further away,” Mr. Earnest said at a press briefing. “So, the president views that kind of continued settlement expansion as counterproductive.”

Conservative Israeli lawmakers and Jewish settlers have welcomed the election of Mr. Trump as president, hoping he will move away from the decadeslong U.S. policy pursuing a two-state solution.

Mr. Trump in the past has been quoted approving of the Israeli settlements. On the campaign trail, he has promised to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The U.S. doesn’t recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital as it awaits a two-state solution.

Aaron David Miller, a former adviser to Republican and Democratic secretaries of State, said Mr. Greenblatt’s comments suggest that the Trump administration is unlikely to raise the issue of settlement building with Israel as a potential problem. Mr. Trump has made contradictory statements that make it hard to predict what he might do, Mr. Miller said. CONTINUE AT SITE

Trump’s Secret Weapon: Obama Not to take away from the GOP victory, but this was a rejection of Obama’s governing. By Kimberley A. Strassel

President-elect Donald Trump paid a visit to the White House Thursday, and by all accounts he was pleasant toward the current occupant. He should be, since Mr. Trump owes his victory to Barack Obama.

Hillary Clinton’s defeat has left the Democratic Party a smoldering heap, its leaders pointing fingers over who or what to blame: James Comey. Robby Mook. Voter suppression. WikiLeaks. Sexism. Barely a mention has been made of the man who presided over one of the most epic party meltdowns in the country’s history: Mr. Obama.

Deep Democratic fissures have been on display for years, with Mrs. Clinton’s rancorous primary against Bernie Sanders only the most recent example. But the media chose to ignore this and instead to obsess about largely superficial GOP divisions. All along this election has been portrayed as a referendum on Mr. Trump. Tuesday’s results are far better viewed as a thundering repudiation, at every level, of Mr. Obama’s governing and policies.

In 2009, the president’s first year in office, the Democrats held 257 House seats, a majority that was geographically and politically diverse. After Tuesday the figure stands at 193, and fully one-third of these Democrats hail from three blue states: New York, California and Massachusetts.

The story is equally grim for Democrats in the Senate. In 2009 they held the first filibuster-proof majority since the 1970s, which evaporated in the wake of ObamaCare. Tuesday’s vote was the best chance Democrats will have in years to retake the chamber, but they lost nearly every close race.

Trump and the Democrats The lesson: Progressive government can’t be imposed from the top.

Donald Trump’s victory is already inspiring reflection about the future of the Republican Party, and rightly so, but Democrats don’t seem to be undertaking any similar introspection. This is a mistake, because they wouldn’t have been ushered out of power up and down the ballot if the American public wasn’t rejecting the results and methods of the last eight years.

Liberals are attributing Hillary Clinton’s loss to FBI Director Jim Comey, while the more honest admit her email scandal and Clinton Foundation ethics were problems. Others note she was a less than inspiring campaigner. The left’s all-purpose answer seems to be that the same American people who elected President Obama twice have defaulted to their traditional sexism, racism and xenophobia.

Blaming “white-lash” is silly—of the roughly 700 U.S. counties that Mr. Obama won twice, about one-third broke this time for Mr. Trump—but these cultural rationalizations are lamentable and instructive. Too many liberals, and some conservatives, simply cannot imagine how great numbers of Americans think and perceive their own interests. Thus wrong opinions must be the result of cognitive limitations or character flaws. Mrs. Clinton called Trump supporters “deplorables,” “irredeemable” and “not America,” as if there could be no other explanation.

These failures of empathy are also a staple of Mr. Obama’s rhetoric, with his moral lectures about who we are as Americans and the arc of history always bending toward—well, his point of view. For the President, and most prominent Democrats these days, opponents who debate policies and principles never do so in good faith.

For eight long years Mr. Obama’s belief that he holds the mandate of heaven has guided how he has used and abused presidential power. He was elected in 2008 on a message of hope and centrist unity, but he was soon ramming through 40 years of pent-up progressive priorities. Recall his famous 2009 brush-off of Republican Eric Cantor, who had proposed some bipartisan ideas for the stimulus: “Eric, I won.”

Democrats imposed ObamaCare on a straight partisan majority, though the polls showed there was no political consensus about a new entitlement among the oft-invoked, rarely consulted American people. National health care is no more popular today and is now misfiring in all the ways the critics predicted. The GOP was frozen out of all major economic decisions in 2009-10, and one price was the weak recovery that persists to this day.

Democrats did have a historic supermajority, but that wasn’t a mandate to do whatever they could get away with, and they lost a record 63 House seats in the midterms as punishment. Mr. Obama then feinted toward a grand bargain with John Boehner, only to ambush the then Speaker with politically impossible tax-increase demands at the 11th hour.

The President won re-election in 2012 by converting a decent man like Mitt Romney into a monster who would prosecute a “war on women.” He also weaponized identity politics to polarize voters for his own purposes.

The GOP’s Down Ballot Sweep The party adds to its historic dominance at the state level.

How a President Donald Trump will change the Republican party isn’t obvious, amid countless media predictions of doom. But one under-reported story of Tuesday’s election is that reform-minded Republicans continued their march in the states, and the party controls a record 69 of 99 legislative majorities across the country.

Republicans flipped three state legislative chambers, including the Iowa senate and Kentucky house, which turned for the GOP for the first time in almost 100 years. Bluegrass State Republicans defeated the house speaker, who was first elected in 1980, and the GOP controls both legislative houses and the governorship. Watch for right-to-work legislation, pension reform and school choice.

Republicans defended majorities in states such as West Virginia, Michigan and Maine, where Democrats dropped $2 million on some senate seats. The GOP held on to supermajorities in the North Carolina house and senate, and it added to majorities in the Wisconsin assembly and senate. The Ohio house supermajority reached an new high. These gains will allow for more innovative ideas from state laboratories.
The GOP also cleaned up in a few Democratic strongholds: Republicans gained four seats in the Illinois house, ending a Democratic supermajority. Great news for Republican Governor Bruce Rauner, who has been held hostage on public pensions, education and even passing a budget. The party of Lincoln took the Minnesota senate, and the Connecticut senate is now an 18-18 tie, a result that may save the state from more progressive taxation and spending.

Republicans lost the house and senate in Nevada, a defeat driven by Sen. Harry Reid’s turnout machine and a poor Trump performance in the state. The latter also hurt Republican candidates for the New Mexico house, which Democrats took. Republicans now hold the governorship and both chambers in some 25 states. The number for Democrats? Four. CONTINUE AT SITE

THE CELEBRITY DEPARTURE LOUNGE: EDWARD CLINE

Excuse me while I have some fun. Put this column under “comic relief.”

Daniel Nussbaum of Breitbart Hollywood on November 8th ran a column I could not pass up making comments about, “16 Celebrities Who Will Leave the U.S. if Trump Wins.”
With Election Day polls opening up across the country on Tuesday, some of Hollywood’s most progressive celebrities have got their bags packed just in case Republican Donald Trump prevails over Democrat Hillary Clinton. [which he certainly did, rubbing Hillary’s lying face in the mud].

And the winners and whiners are:

Barbra Streisand

I can’t believe it. I’m either coming to your country if you’ll let me in, or Canada,” the singer told 60 Minutes in an interview in August [sic, either/or gaffe]. Streisand has been a vocal supporter of Clinton’s candidacy, and appeared at a high-profile fundraiser for the candidate in New York City earlier this year.

Not that the appearances did Clinton any good. The Clinton campaign must have paid her plenty. And if it did, did Babs donate the fee to the Clinton Global Initiative? Donald Trump did not need to book high-profile “stars” during his campaign. Getting to see stars other than Trump was not why his massively attended rallies drew hall-filling crowds. They came to hear real “hope and change” expressed by a non-establishment outsider.

Bryan Cranston

“I would definitely move. It’s not real to me that that would happen. I hope to God it won’t,” Cranston said in October of the possibility of a Trump victory. The Breaking Bad star suggested he would take a permanent vacation to Vancouver.

The question is: Will all these Hollywood leavers also surrender their U.S. citizenship? A rather doubt there’s any substance to their anti-Trump breast-beating.

Miley Cyrus

The young pop star said she would “move out da country” if Trump, whom she called a “f*cking nightmare” were to win the election.

Well, what is she waiting for? There are daily flights to Canada from a variety of airports. Perhaps she’s waiting for the Canadian visa people to give her the green light. Or perhaps she’s received a note from Canadian Immigration authorities to the effect: “We’d rather import 10,000 un-assimilable Muslims than your porn-rock , sweetheart. That is, there are just so many venues in our country that would allow you to wiggle your naked butt and allow horny Muslim men here to fondle your snatch and pretend to boing you from behind while you allegedly ‘sing’.” Please be truthful: Is moving to Canada just an opportunity to moon America and Trump from a safe distance, or are you portraying yourself as a suffering “refugee”? Eh?

ON THIS VETERANS DAY- A MESSAGE FROM THE LONDON CENTER FOR POLICY STUDY

Friends,

As we celebrate this Veterans Day let us take a moment to thank all the members of our military who have taken it upon themselves to protect the freedoms we hold dear. Let us take a moment to remember all OUR heroes who have sacrificed their lives while taking up the task to defend this nation from those who wish to destroy the freedoms it stands for.

Most importantly let us take a moment to thank God for those who are willing to stand up and fight to protect our freedom, and to ask for his continued guidance and protection.

O God, our Father, Thou Searcher of human hearts, help us to draw near to Thee in sincerity and truth. May our religion be filled with gladness and may our worship of Thee be natural.

Strengthen and increase our admiration for honest dealing and clean thinking, and suffer not our hatred of hypocrisy and pretense ever to diminish. Encourage us in our endeavor to live above the common level of life. Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half-truth when the whole can be won. Endow us with courage that is born of loyalty to all that is noble and worthy, that scorns to compromise with vice and injustice and knows no fear when truth and right are in jeopardy. Guard us against flippancy and irreverence in the sacred things of life. Grant us new ties of friendship and new opportunities of service. Kindle our hearts in fellowship with those of a cheerful countenance, and soften our hearts with sympathy for those who sorrow and suffer. Help us to show forth in our lives the ideals to Thee and to our Country. All of which we ask in the name of the Great Friend and Master of all. – Amen

(West Point Cadet Prayer)

May God bless us all.

Eli M. Gold

London Center for Policy Research Vice-President

MY SAY: A TRIBUTE TO VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

Thank you Victor Davis Hanson for all your columns on the recent election. The media, including conservative journals was engaged in a gang fatwa against Donald Trump, feeding on every word, every misstep, every vulgarity, every alleged misdeed. You rose above the din to understand and eloquently explain the dynamics that propelled “forgotten” Americans to support Trump. You exposed the chicanery and corruption of the Clinton swamp to disclose the difference between the candidates.

You are a scholar and a gentleman who never stoops to profanity and yet you saw beyond crass talk, something that many of your colleagues in the media failed to do. Your columns inspired and educated faltering Republicans. Nobody said it as well as you did.

Thank you. You were at the top of the “savior” journalists. You deserve medals.

You deserve medals.

Sincerely,

Ruth King

A Blow to the Non-Elite Elite Biased and incompetent elites polluted the 2016 election, and they are getting what they deserved. By Victor Davis Hanson —

There were a lot of losers in this election, well beyond Hillary Clinton and the smug, incompetent pollsters and know-it-all, groupthink pundits who embarrassed themselves.

From hacked e-mail troves we received a glimpse of the bankrupt values of Washington journalists, lawyers, politicians, lobbyists, and wealthy donors. Despite their brand-name Ivy League degrees and 1 percenter ré​sumé​s, dozens of the highly paid grandees who run our country and shape our news appear petty and spiteful — and clueless about the America that exists beyond their Beltway habitat.

Leveraging rich people for favors and money seems an obsession. They brag about wealth and status in the fashion of preteens.

Journalists often violated their own ethics codes during the campaign. Political analyst Donna Brazile even leaked debate topics to the Clinton team. Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank reportedly asked the Democratic National Committee to provide him with anti-Trump research.

Reading about the characters who inhabit the Clinton campaign e-mail trove, one wonders about the purpose of their Yale degrees, their tenures at Goldman Sachs, even their very stints in the Clinton campaign. Was the end game to lose their souls?

One big loser is the Obama Justice Department — or rather the very concept of justice as administered by the present administration. It has gone the tainted way of the IRS, VA, and NSA. The Justice Department clearly pressured the FBI to limit its investigation of pay-for-play corruption at the Clinton Foundation and the State Department.

Seemingly every few weeks of the campaign, FBI director James Comey flip-flopped — depending on whether the most recent pressure on him came from rank-and-file FBI agents, the Clinton campaign, or his boss, Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Lynch met with Bill Clinton in a secret “accidental” encounter on an airport tarmac while Hillary Clinton was under investigation. Immunity was granted to several Clinton aides without the FBI obtaining much cooperation in return. Clinton techies invoked the Fifth Amendment in refusing to testify before Congress.

Clinton campaign organizer John Podesta was in direct contact with his old friend, Peter Kadzik, a high-ranking Justice Department official who was tipping off the Clinton campaign about an impending hearing and a legal filing regarding Clinton’s e-mails. Until he was reassigned, Kadzik was in charge of the Justice Department’s probe of the Huma Abedin/Anthony Weiner e-mail trove.

A special prosecutor should have been appointed. But Democrats and Republicans alike had long ago soured on the use of special prosecutors. Democrats felt that Ken Starr went way beyond his mandates in pursuing Bill Clinton’s excesses. Republicans charged that Lawrence Walsh’s investigation of the Iran-Contra affair had turned into a witch hunt.